I'll Walk You Home
by Ineffability
Summary: Lovino Vargas is a student working in a family-run cafe who doesn't quite know how to handle having a boyfriend who seems to genuinely love him. Human!AU; rated T for language.
1. Chapter 1

_Hello, everyone! I actually wrote this story a considerable while ago, maybe about six months ago, & because it went down well on my lj I've finally plucked up the courage to post it here after my friends encouraged me to because of the larger readership. I hope you enjoy it! The story is complete, so I'll put up the chapters periodically - probably every Friday until it's done._

_Pairing:Spain/Romano (Spamano)_

_Rated T for language._

"An-Antonio, seriously, I need to go now, it's—"

Pools of watery sunlight had started to spill through the cracks in Lovino Vargas' curtains hours ago. They were settling, about as solid as ripples, on the bedsheets, moving with the dips and curves of Antonio's body as he pulled them up to his face with the white cloth gathered between his fingers. Lovino, halfway out of bed already, shifted the mess of papers and cups and bottles on the bedside table with blind fingers for his watch.

"Fuck," he said, but the word didn't come out quite as venomously as either had expected, "I can't believe it's two already. I needed to be at work half an—" he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he brushed it away, "—hour ago."

"I will be here when you get back, _cariño_."

"No, you will not. If I get home and you are still in my bed I will fucking kill you."

A student's bedroom is never known to be in the best of states, but that afternoon Lovino's floor gave 'messy' an entire new meaning. He picked up a white shirt that was too big and too clean to belong to him, and dropped it on the chest of the Spaniard in his bed. He pulled on the clothes that were closest to his feet.

"Uh, Lovi?" there was laughter in Antonio's voice as he picked up the shirt and dropped it back onto the floor.

"What?" he snapped on his way to the door.

"That coat is mine."

Lovino looked down at the khaki-green coat and realised the sleeves had swallowed his hands. He contemplated taking it off, then realised there wasn't time. _Nonno_was going to murder him as it was.

"Whatever," he folded up the sleeves.

"Oh, and Lovi—"

"For fuck's sake, Antonio, _what_?"

"You forgot to kiss me goodbye."

Lovino stopped with the door half open and one sleeve of his boyfriend's coat folded, and turned back to where Antonio was sitting up expectantly. Soft and deceptively hard-faced, he ran his hands quickly through the man's hair and kissed him, then again, slower and gentler. He tasted the way he always did, every time – of burnt sugar and flour and fruit. There was something addictive about it— about _him_.

"Right," he said, "I have to go now. Seriously. And when I get home you had better not still be here, because Feli is coming back with me."

"Oh, Feliciano. He is such a sweet boy."

"He's a fucking moron. He means well, though, I suppose. And take home all your clothes with you – half your wardrobe is on my floor."

By the time Lovino had arrived at his grandfather's café, it was closer to three and every table was occupied, every chair taken, and the cacophony of voices and hissing coffee machines and clanking dishes had risen to the ceiling. He could see his brother from across the room, smiling in that soft, genuine way Lovino never managed to pull off when it was his turn to serve the customers. The girl at the table was giggling as Feliciano served her coffee to her, and he rolled his eyes at the way his silly baby brother leaned close to her, laughing when she did, flirting effortlessly the way he did with every pretty girl that came to the café. He saw Lovino as he looked up, and nearly dropped the empty tray into her lap.

_"Fratello_!" he shouted, his voice somehow rising above every other that battled for dominance around him. He ran to his older brother, nearly knocking a table down in the process. "Ve, where have you been? The café is full of people! _Nonno_ is going to very mad at you; he says that you are going to need a very good reason to be so late. What _is_your reason?"

Despite the brothers moving to London with their grandfather nine years ago, when Lovino was thirteen and Feliciano eleven, Feliciano had an Italian accent so thick and distinguished that the natives of the city often had to ask him to repeat what he had just said. Occasionally, he would trip over more awkward words and get his tongue in a twist, while Lovino could speak English in his sleep.

Lovino pushed past his brother, who clutched the plastic tray to his chest and looked mildly confused at the lack of an answer. Their grandfather stood at the counter, chatting to a girl half his age as he rang up the till, not even making the effort to hide the fact he was shamelessly flirting with her. She nodded and giggled as she fished for coins in her purse, and as Lovino stood next to her he saw the blush spreading across her face and up her bare arms.

"A-Ah, I'm so sorry, I'm thirty pence short. I-I'm so—"

_Nonno_laughed and waved his hand dismissively. "A pretty girl like you should not need to get herself in such a flap. Do not worry," he smiled, loud and white-toothed and perfectly charming, "Lovino! Do you have any change in your pockets?"

_Better this than a scalding for being late_, he thought to himself as he searched the pockets of his jeans and realised they weren't his either. They had seemed slightly big around the waist. He would have to repay Antonio at some point or another, he decided, as he dropped thirty pence onto the counter. Nonno picked it up with rough, tanned fingers, dropped it into the till and winked at her. _"Ciao_, pretty lady."

Lovino had no idea how he had gotten away with it for ten years, and he certainly had no idea why so many girls came to the café every morning. Had it been him, he would have sued for harassment the moment he had been winked at.

"So, Lovino, you had better have a good reason. I only ask you to work here for one afternoon a week and I expect you to be on time, you know? Did you oversleep?"

"Sorry, _nonno_. It was— well. Yes, I— overslept. Sorry." Lovino glared at a stain on the counter and began to wonder if he had picked up Antonio's socks by accident as well.

Lovino Vargas' grandfather was, by this point, well into his fifties, yet used more hair products than both his grandsons combined. Tall and muscular with the kind of rough, sun-kissed skin that was commonplace in Italy yet near extinct in London, it was little surprise that he chatted up every girl that he served – they _let_ him. Every movement of _nonno's_ was deliberate and loud, every word he spoke slurred with a thick Italian accent. After twenty-two years of living with _nonno_, and, arguably, pushing him to his limit more than once as a child, he had never seen him angry, never heard him shout or snap. Even the bitterest words were spoken with a child's kindness.

"Would you like a hairbrush, _fratello_?" Feliciano pushed between the two with a tray of empty mugs, casting a quick – and vaguely amused – glance at his brother's bird's nest of hair before ducking behind the counter.

"Oh, now I understand why you were so late!" _nonno_raised an eyebrow, "Sex hair!"

_"What_?"

"Oh, you know, your hair is always a mess after you have—"

"Or maybe I just forgot to brush it because I slept in so late," Lovino took his apron from the hook behind the counter and pulled it over his head, wondering if there was any other grandfather in the world who said things of that nature to their grandson so very blatantly.

"No, I have learned to see the difference. Don't lie to your _nonno_, Lovi," he laughed, loud and booming, and clapped the young man on the back hard enough to almost knock him over. Feliciano suddenly looked intrigued.

"Who is it, _fratello_? Do I know him? Does he go to our university? What is his name?" he began to interrogate him, before adding, "Or her," as an afterthought.

"It's no one. I slept in. Dammit, Feliciano, why must you be so fucking nosy?" Lovino grabbed a clipboard and pen and began to approach a man who had just made his way to a table, glad to get away from the barrage of questions.

"Good afternoon welcome to _Café Vargas_may I take your order," he drawled, uncapping the pen between his teeth. He recognised the customer as a student at his university – an unkempt man with the thickest English accent Lovino had ever heard and fashion sense that made him want to gouge his eyes out with the corner of his clipboard – but had never spoken to him. The man – Arthur, or Anthony, something like that – was opening his laptop, looking like he would rather be anywhere other being served by a foul-tempered Italian.

"Tea, thanks."

"Is _that_him?"

Feliciano peered over his brother's shoulder at the Englishman in front of them. The Englishman stared back.

"No, dammit, _fratello_. You honestly think that I would—"

"So it's _someone_then? Can I meet him? Oh! I can meet him tonight! Ve, you should invite him to eat dinner with us!"

"It's not—"

"I can invite Ludwig! It'll be wonderful! Like a— a double date thing."

"Feliciano, there is no way in hell that that bastard is setting foot into my apartment."

Lovino and his brother, despite his brother's best efforts, did not, and never would, have the perfect sibling relationship – or anything remotely close. The one thing the brothers had found in common was their passion for cooking and so, since he was obligated to see Feliciano's stupid face at work and university every day anyway, he had arranged for them to cook and eat a traditional Italian dinner together once a week. He felt, with his brother's enthusiasm and constant, cloying displays of affection, he should make some effort – they were, after all, family.

His brother looked ready to cry. Ludwig Beilschmidt, his brother's stupid German boyfriend, was – in Lovino's eyes – Feliciano's oversized lap dog. He was like one of those infernal Chihuahua things, who stuck to their master's heel like a shadow and snapped and snarled at everyone else. This could have had something to do with the fact that Lovino couldn't remember the last time he hadn't referred to him as 'potato bastard'.

"Please, Lovi? I won't ask again. He won't come any other week," that heartbroken expression was enough to even make Lovino feel a twinge of guilt. He flapped his hand in a dismissive, 'fine' gesture. Feliciano leaped on him, slinging long, ropey arms around his neck in a display of affection that Lovino experienced on a regular basis yet would never get used to.

Arthur pretended to occupy himself with his laptop. All he had wanted was a bloody cup of tea.

Lovino spent the rest of his shift spilling milk on the counter, misreading orders in his own handwriting, fucking up the espresso machine and ignoring customers. Occasionally his phone would vibrate in his apron pocket and it would always be Antonio, bombarding him with menial texts that meant nothing; that were ended with a string of kisses and peppered with cheerful emoticons that made Lovino want to break something. He would reply occasionally and sometimes ignore them, knowing another would fly in five minutes later, and he'd probably reply to that one if it could warrant a reply that wasn't completely idiotic.

His phone buzzed again as he was trying to dab spilt sugar from the counter with a napkin.

_lovi, u have never told me where u work! give me the address and i will pay u a visit xxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Feliciano and _nonno_were going to be ecstatic.

He could ignore the text, but maybe a visit from Antonio would break his day up a little. All he had done all day was break and spill and drop and forget things.

Antonio turned up twenty minutes after Lovino replied to his message – twice as fast as it took for Lovino to arrive to work every weekend; however he did it, Lovino needed to know.

For some reason, when he saw the Spaniard fighting with the door (clearly he had missed the sign reading 'push' that was tacked to the glass directly in front of his face), his chest felt tighter, warmer, lighter, like the little candles that flickered on the tablecloths.

"You got here fast," he said, after Antonio had finally won his tiny battle with the front door. Antonio's reply was to grab the front of his apron and kiss him in the middle of a crowded café. He heard the thick_thud_of his brother's tray hitting the floor and a very British cry of 'get in there, my son' from an anonymous customer.

Surely the kiss hadn't lasted that long, but when Lovino looked away every single person in the café was staring, coffee mugs poised halfway to mouths. A few were applauding. Antonio smiled at the customers, a charming smile that Lovino wanted to tear from his face and keep for himself in his apron pocket.

He turned back to Lovino and touched his hair with the tips of his fingers. "I ran the whole way," he said.

translations:  
><em>fratello<em> - Italian for 'brother'  
><em>nonno<em> - Italian for 'grandfather'  
><em>cariño<em> - a Spanish pet name. I don't know the exact translation but it probably loosely translates to 'darling' or something.  
><em>ciao<em> - you all bloody well know what this means because _everyone_ knows what this means.  
>and 'get in there, my son' is something you regularly hear here being yelled by random guys if they see another random guy kissing their girlfriend... just to avoid confusion.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

_Thank you so much for the reviews / favourites etc so far! I'm sorry I didn't put this up last night as promised. And I also apologise for the html in the last chapter being a bit messy; I've fixed it this time._

* * *

><p>"Well, he is certainly charming."<p>

_Nonno _grinned and clapped his grandson on the back for the second time that day, repairing the espresso machine with his other hand for the third time.

"He does the same major as me, _fratello_! I see him at lectures! One time, he came up to me and asked 'are you Italian?', and I said that I was, and he said 'Italy is a wonderful country' and I was like 'yes! It is!' and he smiled at me. He has a very big smile and his teeth are all white. He's very handsome, isn't he?"

"I'll go take that couple's order." Lovino picked up his clipboard and pen.

Antonio had left after staying at the table closest to the counter for an hour and a half, cradling an espresso so Lovino wouldn't have any valid excuse to kick him out. He had watched him pour coffee and steam milk and clean mugs and occasionally their eyes would lock together as Lovino walked past to take orders or clean tables. He would never say a word, only smile and run his finger along the rim of the espresso cup. Lovino didn't smile back, but would stare until the objects on the tray rattled and demanded his attention return to them. An old woman had smiled at him as he had served her her cappuccino, winked and said 'you're very lucky; that boy loves you'. Lovino had simply smiled and handed her her napkin.

On his way back from taking orders, Lovino's eyes had instinctively fallen on the table closest to the counter. The candle in the middle had melted down to the saucer.

"Miss him yet?" Lovino's grandfather smiled sympathetically.

"Of course not," Lovino said, with more venom than he'd intended, "One Americano and one large hot chocolate with extra cream, marshmallows, chocolate flakes and Maltesers. Greedy bastard."

When Lovino arrived home that evening, the apartment was spotless. He could see his bedroom carpet for the first time since he had moved in. The mountain of dishes he had been choosing to ignore had all been cleaned and dried and filed away neatly into the cupboards. The coffee table had been covered with a white tablecloth he didn't even know he owned. Sitting on the kitchen countertop was a bowl of tomatoes topped with a little card that read 'for dinner tonight' in Antonio's childishly flamboyant handwriting. He had even left a note on the fridge door.

_Hola, cariño!  
>I am so excited for dinner with you! I thought I would<br>leave you some tomatoes for you to cook with but  
>I am sure anything you make will taste delicious. I<br>cleaned for you, since you... haven't in a little while.  
>Haha! I will be back at seven. Don't miss me too much!<br>Te amo, Lovi.  
>Toni.<br>X_

"Fratello? Are you home?"

Lovino tore the note down from the fridge. He looked at it for a moment, his eyes hanging over his own name as he took in the way Antonio had written it in that childish script of his. The dot over the 'i' had bled through the paper, like the pen had lingered there a touch too long. He folded it up once, twice, three times, until it was tiny and thick and satisfyingly heavy in the palm of his hand, and he put it in his pocket.

"Yes," he shouted in reply, "And you know, if you were going to turn up straight from work, you could have walked home with me, idiot."

Feliciano appeared in the kitchen door, shopping bags in both hands. "No, no," he insisted, dropping them on the foldout dining table that Antonio had somehow found and assembled, "I had to buy the pasta."

Lovino began to empty the bags, pulling out packet after packet after packet of spaghetti. With every new packet that emerged his face folded into deeper and deeper confusion. "Uh, Feli, do we need this much? This is enough to feed the entire Italian army."

"Well, Ludwig eats a lot, and there are going to be twice as many of us today but I thought since we had visitors around this time it'd only be polite if we had enough to offer them seconds, so I doubled the amount I usually buy, then doubled it again, then bought an extra one because Ludwig eats a lot."

"Nine packets of spaghetti."

"Do you think it's enough?" Feliciano ran both hands through his hair and looked at the mound of pasta worriedly.

"I'm pretty sure it's enough, yes."

"Oh, good! And you bought the tomatoes. You bought a lot."

It wasn't until Feliciano pointed it out that Lovino realised just how many tomatoes Antonio had left for him. There had to be twenty-five of them, minimum, flowing over the top of the fruit bowl. There was one balanced precariously on the top of the pile, looking ready to roll off if you dared to even breathe near it.

"We should get to work. It's nearly six," Lovino changed the subject, "Wait – do we even have a big enough pot for that fuckload of pasta, _fratello_? Did you think of that?"

Feliciano looked horribly confused.

There wasn't enough space on the cooker for three huge pots of spaghetti, despite the younger Italian's best efforts. In order to stop what looked like the beginnings of tears in his brother's eyes, Lovino filled four plastic containers with pasta and put them in the fridge, promising to reheat them if anyone wanted seconds.

Feliciano busied himself slicing tomatoes as thinly as he could while Lovino forced an oversized pot into the sink and spilled pasta sauce down the edge of the tap. The enjoyment of a spotlessly clean kitchen had been tragically short-lived.

"You know, Lovino, I was watching Antonio today when he was watching you. His eyes were all soft and starry. I think he's in love with you."

Feliciano was an idiot in the academic sense by anyone's standards, but had a distinct, if unconventional, artistic flair that had earned him a place in an almost-but-not-quite prestigious art school. He had a talent for reading faces and noticing things in people that others overlooked. He was dense, but he was perceptive.

"He's not in love with me. We're not even a couple. He's Spanish – what the hell do you expect from him? He's a seductive bastard who knows exactly what he's doing and how good he is at it."

Feliciano just smiled and sprinkled basil into the pot nearest him. "How long have you been together, Lovi?" he asked.

"We're not _together_. He just likes leaving his clothes all over my floor."

Feliciano laughed and Lovino snarled under his breath and said, "Two months on Wednesday."

"The fact that you've been counting the days says everything, _fratello_."

Lovino didn't reply. His mind cast back to the time he had missed the last train home and had been preparing to sleep in the train station only to have Antonio turn up in his car at three in the morning, a pillow and a blanket lying across the back seat; the time he had found a shower of white lily petals fluttering through the hall, and a bunch of them so large he struggled to pick them all up lying outside the door; the thousands of times in the past fifty-six days when Antonio had done something so small he probably thought nothing of it – an arm around his waist, a hand running through his hair when they watched television together – that Lovino had had no idea how to react to. He remembered the first time Antonio kissed him; he had gone as tense as a violin string. He had barely moved his lips at all. Antonio had done all the work, kissing something about as responsive as a wooden board.

The doorbell rang. Lovino nearly splashed the pasta sauce on himself as he stirred it and felt heat rush unexpectedly to his face. "You get that," he said, and Feliciano obliged more than enthusiastically. Moments later he pulled a tall, blonde and wholly unwelcome German into the kitchen by his wrist.

"Lovi, Ludwig is here!"

Lovino deigned to look up from stirring the pasta. "So I gathered. And he's early."

"I said he could come straight from his last class," Feliciano chirped. Ludwig shifted from one foot to the other, clearly feeling uneasy in the apartment. _He knows fine well he's not welcome_, Lovino thought, and somehow that made him feel slightly better about the whole situation.

He had an arm around Feliciano's waist, and Feliciano was holding the hand curled around his side, knotting his delicate child's fingers through Ludwig's long, calloused ones. If he had to thank Ludwig Beilschmidt for anything at all (and he didn't, and he'd make sure he never would) it would be how happy he had made his brother.

"Would you like me to help you?" Ludwig asked. Stiflingly serious and polite, as usual, as always – Germans were about as expressive as planks of wood, from Lovino's experience.

"No."

Feliciano looked disappointed yet wholly unsurprised. "Ah, well, but—" he tripped over his words, hitting a mental roadblock and forgetting every English word he knew for a fraction of a second.

"It's okay, Feli, I'll finish cooking myself. You go keep Ludwig company in the living room," he said, "It'll be ready soon anyway and you've done enough as it is. Wouldn't be fair to deprive you of your German lapdog."

Ludwig knew not to retort in front of his boyfriend, for whom the derogatory meaning of 'lapdog' had been almost completely lost in translation. He took the larger man's arm in his and Lovino listened to them make their way through to the cramped, one-person living room, heard them talk in quiet voices – Feli's fast, clipped and clumsy; Ludwig's slow and deliberate.

Where the hell was Antonio?

Maybe he should phone him, ask him to come round a little earlier, keep him company. Maybe he could grate the parmesan or rinse the pots out or sit on the counter and eat the two leftover tomatoes. _Wait, don't be ridiculous, he's going to be here in ten minutes anyway. He's probably busy doing his hair anyway or something stupid. _

Lovino closed the kitchen door and grated the parmesan himself, down and down until it was paper-thin and he grated the tips of his fingers instead.

Antonio turned up late with one arm cradling a waxy firework of flowers. The other one had two bottles of wine dangling between bent fingers, one red and one white, with yellow labels and bulky, dark green glass that warped Lovino's reflection. He said hello to Ludwig, kissed Feliciano lightly on both cheeks and then put the bottles on the carpet to touch the back of Lovino's neck. He pressed the flowers between their chests as he kissed him the same way he had his brother and then again, very hard and very warm, on the mouth.

"In front of my brother? Really?" he asked, "And you've crushed those flowers, moron."

The Spaniard inspected the flowers for himself. They _were _looking slightly dejected, and some of them had more petals on the floor than they did still intact.

"I will put them in the sink," he said, "They'll come back to life soon. And dinner smells simply wonderful, _cariño_. You and your brother are fantastic cooks. Did you use my tomatoes?"

"All of them except two!" Feliciano said from Ludwig's arm. Antonio looked genuinely delighted. He rubbed Lovino's arm gently, not a word to accompany his actions, and sat the bouquet in the sink, straightening out what was left of the petals so they weren't pressed against the edges.

"Thank you, by the way," Lovino said. His eyes flitted over Antonio's face, his hair, his neck, then the floor, "For everything. Cleaning, taking all your shit home, the— the tablecloth. And the flowers, and the wine. And I don't think I said, you know, when you were there, but I really appreciate that you came to the café today, because I'm bored as hell there most days. Oh, and— and the texts. I don't deserve all of this."

Something happened to Lovino every time Antonio looked him in the eye. Eye contact came so _naturally_ to Antonio, and they were green, bright sea-glass green like the marbles you played with as a kid, and Lovino wanted to reach out and touch them to see if they were real. He felt his face heating up, and his neck, and his collarbone. What _was_ he, a fifteen-year-old girl? This was ridiculous. _Get a hold of yourself. It's just Antonio. _

"What do you mean, you don't deserve it?"

Every remotely articulate thought process in Lovino Vargas' brain curled up and died.

"It's just— _God_, Antonio, everything. You treat me like I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you, when surely I'm not. I'm a foul-tempered, filthy-mouthed fucking brat half the time. I just don't understand— I don't— I mean, what redeeming qualities do I have that my brother doesn't have twice as much of? You should find someone who you deserve— y-you moron."

Antonio said nothing, but the arms around him and the head on his shoulder were worth every word of an entire fucking novel.

Dinner came and went and, for possibly the first time in his life, Lovino didn't feel like eating anything. Antonio sat next to him, making casual conversation, joking and laughing as he held Lovino's hand underneath the table. Feliciano was on his best behaviour – last time he had gone out to eat with Feliciano and his boyfriend, Feliciano somehow managed to pressure Ludwig into 'doing that thing they did in Lady And The Tramp' with a piece of spaghetti, and it was not nearly as cute or quaint as it sounded in retrospect.

Feliciano agreed to wash the dishes, and Ludwig insisted on helping. Lovino had barely touched his food; Antonio had finished his, but Lovino could tell it had been out of simple politeness. He hadn't found any enjoyment in it, and he kept squeezing Lovino's hand. They sat together on the couch, looking at the television but not watching it, Antonio gently running one finger up and down and up and down the stitching in Lovino's jeans.

It was the first time since their first date that Antonio asked if he could kiss him, and he said yes.

It could have been two seconds or two hours, but at some point after that Lovino had a hefty amount of half-naked Spaniard on top of him, and it definitely wasn't unpleasant or anything. It took him far too long to remember that all that was separating him – and oh, wait, there was his shirt, halfway across the room, and Antonio was doing something clumsy with his belt now – from his little brother was a wall with the thickness of a piece of sandpaper.

"Wait," he said, gulping in a lungful of air once Antonio had turned his attention to Lovino's neck instead, "Feliciano's through there."

Antonio stopped. "O-Oh. Good point, _cariño_."

"Hm. We can do this later – you know, when my little brother's not here."

"Okay," Antonio didn't make a move to put his shirt back on though, or fix Lovino's belt, which he had pulled halfway out of the loops in his jeans. "Lovino."

"Hm?"

"You _are_ the best thing that's ever happened to me."


End file.
